Campaign Highlights: Psychodrama and role plays at University of Warsaw

“For me an alarm went off some time ago when I realized that vast majority of students of public health and criminology share the same opinion about sex work as an activity of mediocre people” says Justyna Sobeyko.

“These students are the people who will create the social attitude in the future. Public health professionals shape the law and policy related to sex work. So I decided something has to be done to change that.”

“I started from checking the current knowledge on sex work and sex workers and attitudes towards sex workers. This preliminary research was conducted on a group of 78 students, 56 of public health mastership course, 22 medical students.“

“The results confirmed that their knowledge is really poor. Students of public health course did not know about the existing law related to sex work and did not see the impact of marginalization and criminalization on public health. Actually sex work issue was completely indifferent to most of them.”

“So my task was to present the law, basic public health information, some historical and international background of sex work and finally the Declaration of Sex Workers Rights. 78 young people have got and read it.

“Students were encouraged to learn as much as possible to participate in a competition called: Sex Work, Law and Public Health.”

“The final of the competition was held on Monday, December 17. The students presented what they learnt; some played roles of sex work advocates using content related arguments. Some of them were sex workers, some of them were sex workers’ enemies using arguments based on emotions and morality. This psychodrama method was a great success. At least those who participated will never again treat sex work issue as an indifferent one” – adds Justyna Sobeyko.